Is sports the true metaverse?

What do a tennis racket thrown on cement by Daniil Medvedev, a dunk by Karl-Anthony Towns, and a touchdown by Nico Collins have in common? Not much, except that they all happened in the last month and were broadcasted not only in the traditional way, but also simultaneously in an augmented version featuring Disney characters or Nickelodeon, with the aesthetics of Nintendo Wii or arcade video games. Simulcasting, or the simultaneous broadcasting of the same show on different platforms and in different modes, is becoming more and more common in sports and could open up a new season for both television entertainment and the ever-important TV rights.

In fact, the recent sale of TV rights has prompted the Australian Open to create a parallel live broadcast in which the players become avatars of Grand Slam Tennis or Wii Tennis with surreal consequences. The Australian Open is the first of the four Grand Slams played every year in the ATP and WTA circuits and is by far the least conservative, but no one would have expected such an unconventional and surprising choice in the world of tennis. The tank top of Alcaraz, the first major appearance in a Major for Joao Fonseca, the visor of Naomi Osaka, and of course the racket of Medvedev, which glitched as the Russian tennis player tried to break it on the cement of the Rod Laver Arena. Of course, the white cap with the fox of Jannik Sinner could not be missing, characterizing the digital version of the ATP Ranking Number 1.

The Australian Open has decided to follow the path already traced in recent times by the three main professional leagues in the United States, NBA, NFL, and NHL, which have experimented with augmented forms of broadcasting to bring in increasingly diverse audiences to the games. Where sports are closer to entertainment, it has been easier to establish partnerships with television networks, platforms, or directly with those who hold the rights to the most important animated characters, from Disney to The Simpsons. So we have been able to see NBA players transformed into Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, or Pluto during the Christmas Games, Nickelodeon's slime cannons covering the NFL fields after every touchdown, and Spongebob explaining the rules of a sport that may seem complicated and off-putting to younger audiences like Football. Or Bugs Bunny, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman skating on the ice rinks of the NHL thanks to the agreement between Warner Bros and the North American league.

A continuous hybridization that is favored by the fragmentation of TV rights and the acquisition of rights by increasingly large media groups that hold multiple IPs, from entertainment to live sports, and can organize these types of encounters between seemingly distant worlds. The arrival of live sports on streaming platforms, from Amazon Prime to Netflix, is also rapidly changing the paradigm for consumers, multiplying not only the number of subscriptions but also opportunities and programming. Therefore, the future seems to be increasingly full of sports events in simulcasting, enriching the offer to make the most of what are currently the most important rights in the television landscape. We will see if having an NBA game with Disney characters or an 8-bit Slam final will help sports conquer even younger generations, who are showing more and more difficulty in staying seated in front of the TV for the entire duration of an event.